When you have reached the blessed age when you might not hesitate to give others a piece of advice, you just have to think about the problems of youth in the post-Soviet countries, and try to find out what is common in young people and what sets them apart, so that a Turkish or Indonesian guy is considered more interesting than a girl from Kiev or a boy from Baku .
This question is definitely somewhat relative, as some people seem interesting to us and some do not, depending on so many different things, not only nationality or country of residence. For those of us now over forty, it's natural to feel these connections with other people, with whom we have a common Soviet past, and we are willing to hand these feelings down to our children. They do not express such an interest.
I'd rather not accuse the new generation, but I'll try to identify what is common in young people today, try to find out whether they have common interests or not. Perhaps they are completely different from each other and from us and cannot understand the thoughts of an old Russian man.
First of all, the factor of language, the knowledge of Russian. All young people from Kazakhstan and Ukraine with whom I am acquainted speak Russian. I cannot imagine a Kazakh living in a city and not able to speak Russian properly.
However, in the South Caucasus the situation is different. In Yerevan I would even have had to use other languages in cafes or shops if my friend Tigran hadn?t been with me. In Baku everything is a bit easier, but my friend Ismail can only sigh when ask him how Russian language traditions are preserved in Azerbaijan.
To see how Russian is spoken in Tajikistan or Uzbekistan one has only to visit a town's market place. The Russian language is used to communicate with Russian customers, but, which upsets me, the residents of Dushanbe can now speak French fluently, as a French contingent is quartered there. Small children in the capital?s streets saying "Bonjour, monsieur!" seems strange to me.
The situation in Western Ukraine is very curious, where I used to communicate with youngsters whereby they spoke Ukrainian and I spoke Russian. And we easily understood each other.
The attitude to elders, I believe, is a rather useful criteria for understanding how the traditions of post-Soviet countries are preserved. Unfortunately, I have to admit, that even in the Caucasus the situation is completely different from the one ten or twenty years ago. Today it's quite common to interrupt an elder or even be rude to him.
Attitude to females. The most interesting thing for me from this point of view are Kazakhs. Young men there marry very early and then get themselves a mistress and then one more and so on. And they don't think that this is reprehensible.
The situation in the South Caucasus is a bit different, where young men try to remain gentlemen in their attitude to females. However, even there the influence of globalization is evident: the same clothes, the same music and so on. Individuality disappears. I don't know whether it's good or not.
(to be continued)
